The FRANKLIN SCANDAL is the story of a nationwide pedophile ring that pandered children to a cabal of the rich and powerful. The ringâs pimps were a pair of political powerbrokers who had access to the highest levels of our government. Nebraska legislators nearly exposed the ring in 1990, but its unveiling had the potential to produce seismic political aftershocks. The legislators' efforts resulted in a rash of mysterious deaths and the overpowering corruption of federal and local law enforcement, including the FBI, Secret Service, and Justice Department, effecting an immaculate cover-up of the trafficking network.

The publisher is donating 50% of the book's proceeds to organizations that assist abused children.

Nick Bryant has spent seven years researching this book and he's traveled approximately 40,000 miles. He's had access to thousands of documents that would ultimately be sealed by two grand juries. His documentation includes FBI reports and interoffice memos, Omaha Police Department reports and internal memos, Nebraska State Patrol reports, Nebraska Department of Social Services reports, internal Boys Town reports, victim debriefings, hundreds of the ring's airline receipts, etc. He's also interviewed several of the network's victims who are now young adults.

The FRANKLIN SCANDAL also tackles the issue of ritual abuse. Indeed, some of the victims that Bryant has interviewed have confessed to being ritually abused. To corroborate their accounts, Bryant's book highlights several studies published in academic journals that back up the reality of this heinous practice, including a study conducted by Young et al. published in the Journal of Child Abuse and Neglect -[look at newest scripts: Child Abuse & Neglect], and the Extreme Abuse Survey conducted by Becker et al. The author also discusses the Finders and sheds insights into its activities that have eluded many researchers.


Gary Caradori - FranklinScandal.com


In July of 1989, Senator Schmit released a three-page report urging his subcommittee to "find out where the money went and you'll find the rest," because their previous tactics had yet to yield an indictment. This shift in direction of the subcommittee prompted three members, including its chief investigator Jerry Lowe, to resign.

After Lowe resigned, Schmit called upon Gary Caradori to succeed him as the Franklin subcommittee's chief investigator. Assuming undercover disguises from priest to plumber, Caradori had a talent for finding teenage runaways enmeshed in prostitution and drugs. Caradori, a former Nebraska state patrolman, had founded an investigative firm in Lincoln, Nebraska, and the Lincoln Journal loved him: "When the police tell you their hands are tied ... when your only witness has skipped town and when the justice system seems like it's breaking apart, people call Gary Caradori."

In November and December 1989, Caradori interviewed Alisha Owen, Troy Boner, and Danny King (no relation to Larry King), all in their early 20s. Owen was serving time in the Nebraska Center for Women at York for writing bad checks, while Boner and Danny King were living in the Omaha area. Caradori recorded their sworn testimony on over 20 hours of videotape: They described being flown around the country as underage prostitutes and attending grotesquely sadistic pedophiliac orgies. Larry King, they said, had organized it all. (Caradori videotaped a fourth victim, Paul Bonacci, in May of 1990, who corroborated Owen, Boner, and Danny King. )

Almost immediately, "anonymous" sources started leaking to the Lincoln Journal and the Omaha World-Herald that "one or both" of the young men videotaped by Caradori had failed FBI polygraphs. The FBI refused comment, but State Senator Jerry Chizek denounced the leaks as a violation of federal law: "I've been around a lot of investigations in my 53 years," he said in a Lincoln Journal article, "and I've never seen one like this in my life."

By May of 1990, Caradori had compiled a "Leads List" of 271 people who may have been victims, perpetrators, or witnesses, and submitted it to state and federal investigators. In June 1990, Caradori warned Schmit's subcommittee that the FBI was "deliberately" covering up King's pedophile network. He voiced his reluctance to furnish the evidence he was amassing to the Nebraska State Patrol and FBI (as the subcommittee had ordered), because they were using it to sabotage his investigation.

Caradori also told the subcommittee that he had been trying to obtain pictures of King's orgies. Two of the victims he interviewed mentioned a photographer named Rusty Nelson. The pictures showed who the adults were and who the kids were. I gathered that the purpose was blackmail and it was political. The content of the pictures, and the events surrounding them, would be an instant end to a politician's career. "King hired me to take pictures of adults and children in compromising positions," Nelson tells me.

Nelson promised Caradori incriminating photographs, and they agreed to meet in Chicago. Caradori, accompanied by his 8-year-old son A.J., flew his single-engine Piper Saratoga from Lincoln to Chicago on July 7, 1990. The mission, he said to his wife, was to meet Nelson and then go to the Major League All-Star Game with A.J. "I met with Caradori briefly," says Nelson. "I just gave him the pictures and got out of there." Caradori phoned Senator Schmit from Chicago, exclaiming, "We got them by the shorthairs!"

The Piper Saratoga crashed around 2 A.M. on July 11 in a cornfield near Ashton, Illinois, killing both Caradori and his son. Remnants of the plane were scattered up to 1,800 feet from the fuselage, indicating that it had broken up in flight. Two days later, FBI special agent Michael Mott and a colleague delivered a subpoena to Caradori's grieving widow, demanding all of her husband's Franklin evidence.

Caradori's investigative assistant, Karen Ormiston felt that someone had tampered with the plane. Many of his possessions were missing from the wreckage, she said, including the briefcase that presumably held the photographs. She also asserted that Caradori's death was effectively the end of the Franklin investigation, because additional witnesses were too frightened to emerge from the shadows.

Senator Schmit submitted an affidavit stating that he had been warned that Caradori's life was in danger. He also wrote a letter to the National Transportation Safety Board regarding the missing backseats of Caradori's plane: "... I do not know anything about sabotage, but I have been told that a phosphorous type bomb would, in fact, vaporize metal and any other material with which it came in contact and that unless someone knew what they were looking for, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to detect.... I am sure there will be those who will scoff at such a suggestion, but there have been entirely too many violent deaths associated with this investigation...."


Nick Bryant has posted three of Gary Caradori's video/interview excerpts on the forum http://franklinfiles.net/ and all three are posted on this archive page. FranklinFiles.net is an invaluable Franklin-research message board moderated by Nick, and fellow researchers are welcome to join there and share.

Source files:

Gary Caradori's interview of Alisha Owen
- http://www.franklinscandal.com/Owen/

Duration: 1:25:49
Bit rate: 64kbps
Dimensions: 320x240
Size: 291mb

Gary Caradori's interview of Troy Boner
- http://www.franklinscandal.com/Troy/

Duration: 1:26:14
Bit rate: 64kbps
Dimensions: 320x240
Size: 291mb

Gary Caradori's interview of Paul Bonacci
- http://www.franklinscandal.com/Bonacci/

Duration: 0:32:31
Bit rate: 64kbps
Dimensions: 320x240
Size: 98.8mb

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